“Arthur,” said Seymour with the same false geniality he had used on the telephone a moment earlier. “What are you doing? We’re all waiting for you inside.”

“Sorry, Graham. It’s not often I have a reason to come up here.”

Grimes offered a smile in return, though it was nothing like Seymour’s. Gums and teeth, he thought, and more than a trace of guilt. Turning, he faced the river again, and suddenly he was running. A hand reached for him as he hurled himself over the balustrade, and as he plummeted toward the next terrace he imagined he was flying. Then the ground came rushing up to receive him and he landed with a thud that sounded like splitting fruit.

It was a fall of several floors, enough to kill a man, but not instantly. For a moment or two he was aware of familiar faces hovering over him. They were faces from files, faces of MI6 officers whose lives he had ransacked at will. And yet even in his suffering, no one referred to him by his given name. Personnel had fallen from the roof terrace, they said. Personnel was dead.

63

CORNWALL, ENGLAND

AT THE MARKS & SPENCER in Bristol, Quinn and Katerina purchased two pairs of hiking boots, two rucksacks, binoculars, walking sticks, and a guidebook for Devon and Cornwall. They loaded the bags into the back of the Renault and drove westward to the Cornish town of Helston. Its neighbor was the Royal Naval Air Station Culdrose, Europe’s largest helicopter base. Quinn felt his chest tighten as he drove along the station’s tall chain-link fence topped with swirls of concertina wire. Then a Sea King floated over the road and he was suddenly back in the Bandit Country of South Armagh. His war was over, he told himself. Today his war was here.

Three miles south of the airfield lay the village of Mullion. Quinn followed the signs to the Old Inn and found a car park directly across the lane, next to the Atlantic Forge beach shop. They pulled on the hiking boots and the oilskin coats; then Quinn stuffed the map, guidebook, and binoculars into the canvas rucksack. He left the bag of weapons in the car and carried only the Makarov. Katerina was unarmed.

“What’s our cover story?” she asked as she finished dressing.

“Holidaymakers.”

“In winter?”

“I’ve always been fond of sea resorts in winter.”

“Where are we staying?”

“Your choice.”

“How about the Godolphin Arms in Marazion?”

Quinn smiled. “You’re very good, you know.”

“Better than you.”

“Can you pull off a British accent?”

She hesitated, then said, “Yes, I think I can.”

“You’re a banker from London. And I’m your Panamanian boyfriend.”

“Lucky me.”

They set out from the village along the Poldhu Road, Quinn at the edge of the asphalt, Katerina safely in the verge. After a half mile, a break appeared in the hedgerow and a small sign pointed them toward a public pathway. They negotiated a cattle grid and crossed a farmer’s field to the South West Coast Path. They followed it north along the cliff tops to Poldhu Beach, then along the edge of Mullion Golf Club to the ancient church of St. Winwaloe. After paying a brief visit to the church for the sake of their cover, they continued north to Gunwalloe Cove. The cottage stood alone atop the cliffs at the southern end, nestled in a natural garden of thrift and fescue. Two cars were parked in the drive.

“That’s it,” said Quinn.

He dropped the rucksack, removed the binoculars, and swept the cliff tops, as though admiring the view. Then he took direct aim at the cottage. One of the cars was unoccupied, but in the other sat two men. Quinn scanned the windows of the cottage. The shades were tightly drawn.

“We have company,” said Katerina.

“I see him,” said Quinn, lowering the binoculars.

“What do we do?”

“We walk.”

Quinn returned the binoculars to the rucksack and the rucksack to his shoulder. Then he and Katerina set off again in the same direction. A hundred yards ahead, a man was walking toward them along the cliff tops. He was no ordinary hiker, thought Quinn. Disciplined movements, light on his feet, a gun beneath his dark blue windcheater. He was ex-military, perhaps even ex-SAS. Quinn felt the Makarov pistol pressing against the base of his spine. He wished it were more readily available, but it was too late to make a change now.

“Start talking,” murmured Quinn.

“About what?”

“About how much fun you had with Bill and Mary last weekend and how you wish you could afford a place in the countryside. Maybe a little cottage in the Cotswolds.”

“I hate the Cotswolds.”

Nevertheless, Katerina spoke with passionate enthusiasm about Bill and Mary and their farm near Chipping Campden. And how Bill became flirty when he drank and how Mary was secretly besotted with Thomas, a good-looking colleague from the office whom Katerina always thought was gay. It was then that the ex-soldier came upon them. Quinn fell in behind Katerina to give the man room to pass. She slowed long enough to wish him a pleasant morning, but Quinn kept his eyes on the ground and said nothing.

“Did you see the way he was looking at us?” asked Katerina when they were alone again.

“Keep walking,” said Quinn. “And whatever you do, don’t look over your shoulder.”

The cottage was now directly ahead of them. The coastal path ran behind it, along the edge of a green field. A slight differential in elevation allowed Quinn to peer innocently over a protective hedge and glimpse the faces of the two men sitting in the parked car. Katerina was speaking rather judgmentally about Mary, and Quinn was nodding slowly, as though he found her remarks unusually perceptive. Then, approximately fifty yards past the cottage, he stopped at the cliff’s edge and gazed down into the cove. A man was casting a line into the heavy surf. Behind him a woman walked along a stretch of golden sand, trailed by another man whose windcheater was the same color as the one worn by the ex-soldier on the cliffs. The woman was walking away from them, slowly, aimlessly, like a prisoner taking her allotted exercise in the yard. Quinn waited until she turned before lifting the binoculars to his eyes. Then he offered them to Katerina.

“I don’t need them,” she said.

“Is that her?”

Katerina stared at the woman walking toward her along the water’s edge.

“Yes,” she answered finally. “It’s her.”

64

GUY’S HOSPITAL, LONDON

IN THE MINUTES FOLLOWING the suicide of Arthur Grimes, Graham Seymour once again appealed to Jonathan Lancaster to cancel his visit to Guy’s Hospital. The prime minister held firm, though he did agree to add two men to his security detail. Two men who shared his opinion that revenge could be good for the soul. Two men who wanted Eamon Quinn dead. The head of SO1, the division of the Metropolitan Police that protects the prime minister and his family, was predictably appalled by the notion of adding two outsiders to his detail, one an officer of a foreign intelligence service, the other a man of violence with a dubious past. Nevertheless, he gave them radios and credentials that would open any door at the hospital. He also gave each a Glock 17 9mm pistol. It was a breach of every known protection protocol, but one that had been ordered by the prime minister himself.

There wasn’t time for Gabriel and Keller to go to Downing Street, so a Metropolitan Police BMW scooped them up outside Vauxhall Cross and shot them up Kennington Lane toward Southwark. The historic Guy’s Hospital, one of London’s tallest structures, rose above a tangle of streets near the Thames, not far from London Bridge. The MPS unit dropped them off outside the futuristic skyscraper known as the Shard. Parking was forbidden on the street under normal circumstances and now, with the prime minister’s arrival imminent, it was empty of traffic. There were several vehicles parked on Weston Street, though, including a white commercial van that was sitting low on its axles. On Gabriel’s order, the Metropolitan Police tracked down the owner. He was a contractor, a veteran of the Royal Navy, who was doing renovation work in a nearby building. The van was loaded with limestone flooring tiles.